British national identity and opposition to membership of Europe, 1961–63

The anti-Marketeers

Robert Dewey

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780719078712
• eBook ISBN: 9781847797292
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the opponents of Britain's first attempt to join the European Economic Community (EEC), between the announcement of Harold Macmillan's new policy initiative in July 1961 and General de Gaulle's veto of Britain's application for membership in January 1963. In particular, this study examines the role of national identity in shaping both the formulation and articulation of arguments put forward by these opponents of Britain's policy.
To date, studies of Britain's unsuccessful bid for entry have focused on high political analysis of diplomacy and policy formulation. In most accounts, only passing reference is made to domestic opposition. This book redresses the balance by providing a more complete depiction of the opposition movement and a distinctive approach that proceeds from a 'low political' viewpoint. As such, the book emphasises protest and populism of the kind exercised by, among others, Fleet Street crusaders at the Daily Express, pressure groups such as the Anti-Common Market League and Forward Britain Movement, expert pundits like A. J. P. Taylor, Sir Arthur Bryant and William Pickles, as well as constituency activists, independent parliamentary candidates, pamphleteers, letter writers and maverick MPs.
In its consideration of a group largely overlooked in previous accounts, the book provides essential insights into the intellectual, structural, populist and nationalist dimensions of early Euroscepticism. The book will be of significant interest to both scholars and students of national identity, Britain's relationship with Europe and the Commonwealth, pressure groups and party politics, and the trajectory of the Eurosceptic phenomenon.

1
National identity and Britishness

Analysis of national identity is overwhelmingly a process of deconstruction. But any study acknowledging the complexities of patriotic sentiment must also involve a process of reconstruction. In other words, it is one thing to label manifestations of nationalism as extremist, insular or derived from fallacious assumptions and quite another to examine their pervasiveness and appeal. The following discussion of national identity, envisaged as a series of leitmotifs rather than a rigid analytic structure, is designed to help illuminate the synergy between nationalist thought and anti-Market activism in the chapters that follow. In the process, it addresses the following questions. First, what theoretical constructs might help account for the endurance of nationalism in a globalising era? Second, what mechanisms facilitated the imagination of British identities and what dynamics sustain visions of national uniqueness? Finally, what particular components of British identity were manifest in the first application debate or lent themselves to manipulation in the anti-Market discourses?

Post-1945 nationalism – the theoretical perspective

The need to reconcile an age of globalisation with the persistence of nationalist fervour poses the greatest challenge to any consideration of nationalism and national identity after 1945. Some analysts regard the dichotomy as a feature of the decreasing validity and relevance of nation states. The acceleration of economic interdependence, the internationalisation of trade, technological and communications innovation, and the globalisation of political issues, not to mention wholesale shifts in the patterns of cultural consumption, have all been cited as symptoms of the nation state system in decline. A host of multinational acronyms, including the UN, GATT, IMF, NATO, NAFTA and, for the purposes of this study, the EEC and latterly the EU, are offered as institutional proof. Concurrently, however, one must account for the national aspirations of post-colonial states as well as the nationalist movements within ‘established’ states. Is it possible to reconcile the two apparent contradictions? What is the condition of nationalism in the older nation states? How might theoretical answers to those questions contribute to an understanding of why the integrative agenda of the EEC provoked such strong nationalist reactions among those who opposed British membership?

A notable ‘modernist’ interpretation offered by Eric Hobsbawm ascribed nationalism to the grand era of nation building and regarded its current incarnations as negative, spasmodic kicks against an encroaching and inevitable globalisation. In the 1992 edition of Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, he contended that ‘nationalism, however inescapable, is simply no longer the historical force it was in the era between the French Revolution and the end of imperialist colonialism after World War II’.¹ With the superseding of national economies, nation states will be seen ‘primarily as retreating before, resisting, adapting to, being absorbed or dislocated by the new supranational restructuring of the globe. Nations and nationalism will be present in this history, but in subordinate, and often rather minor roles.’²

Though compelling, this modernist and Marxist interpretation is limited by a tendency to dismiss nationalism as a misplaced energy or false consciousness, rather than analysing its contemporary manifestations. But Hobsbawm’s work raises two further difficulties. First, any theory binding the fate of nationalism to economic reductionism underestimates the importance of social or cultural factors. In an alternative vision, Ernest Gellner acknowledged the forward march of industrial and economic development and subsequent degree of cultural congruence. But, given the intricacies of industrial culture and its links to the political realm, he predicted a modification rather than the elimination of nationalism,³ one in which it ‘persists, but in a muted, less virulent form’.⁴ Anthony Smith was more critical of economic determinism’s failure to adequately address ‘the historic cultural and social components of ethnic organisation and identity’,⁵ as well as of ‘modernist’ views equating nationalism with the rise of the nation state. His broader reading of national identity points to the enduring significance of pre-national bonds, characterised as ‘looser collective cultural units’ or ‘ethnies’,⁶ to whom modern nations are indebted. Smith reconciles the globalisation and fragmentation dichotomy by attributing both phenomena to the same source. Ironically, closer contact between nations, as in the example of European integration, ‘encourages’ rather than discourages ‘ethnic and historical comparison and proliferation of fragmenting ethnic nationalisms’.⁷

The second major difficulty with the ‘decline of nationalism’ thesis is its predilection for consigning nationalism to the fringe. Hobsbawm, for instance, laments the descent of nationalism into xenophobia, ‘which rarely ever pretends to be more than a cry of anguish or fury’.⁸ In fact, this view of nationalism, as distinct from a laudable civic-minded patriotism, passes almost unquestioned. Older ‘established’ nations customarily regard nationalism as the preserve of foreign or irrational elements. Thus, according to widespread belief, ‘The English do not need nationalism nor do they like it’.⁹ This might be defined as one of the most ironic of English conceits, a nationalist sentiment exposed by the process of its denial. Domestically, nationalist outbursts are also seen as the preserve of the desperate or irrational. That aspect of the modernist framework is especially problematic for this study, because it reinforces the tendency to relegate anti-Marketeers to an irrelevant extreme.¹⁰ In this case, in other words, theory further marginalises the political margins.

A fundamental understanding of nationalism must acknowledge the extent to which national identity lies at the heart of contemporary existence. Benedict Anderson claims that ‘nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time’.¹¹ For Anthony Smith, despite their occasions of excess, ‘the nation and nationalism remain the only realistic basis for a free society of states in the modern world’.¹² The most compelling view suggests that, far from waning, nationalism is so much a part of our world-view as to defy recognition. ‘Banal nationalism’ as defined by Michael Billig involves a complex of ‘ideological habits’ in which the nation is ‘flagged’ via politics, culture and the common aspects of daily life. It is called nationalism because it is devoted to representations of nationhood and it is ‘banal’ by virtue of its familiarity.¹³

As a leitmotif that underscores some of the discussion of identity in the chapters that follow, Billig’s conception of the ‘banal’ is especially helpful because it retrieves nationalism from the margins and from moments of exception. ‘The metonymic image of banal nationalism’, Billig writes, ‘is not a flag which is being constantly waved with a fervent passion; it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building’.¹⁴ A host of banal signifiers, including press, money, language, postage, songs and imagined homelands, all point to a conception of national place and reinforce a sense of natural order. Thus, it would be wrong to assume that nations progress beyond nationalism and the need for national symbols. In fact, a national identity, properly considered, ‘is a form of life, which is daily lived in the world of nation states’.¹⁵

The ubiquity of banal nationalism is also significant because it speaks to the ease with which anti-Marketeers played the national card. In other words, opposing Europe on patriotic grounds did not necessitate a complicated search for flags to wave, because so many were readily at hand. Those included the grand themes invoked by anti-Market agitators such as parliamentary sovereignty, Dominion allegiance or World Wars sacrifice. But it also meant that the Daily Express, for example, could call upon symbols from daily life, such as cuisine or the British policeman, and juxtapose them against the traditions of European ‘others’. Nor did the meanings attached to symbols or symbolic rhetoric require much explication. When he noted how Prime Minister John Major effortlessly invoked the phrase ‘“thousand years of history”’ in a 1992 speech on sovereignty and the Maastricht Treaty, Billig might just as easily have referenced Hugh Gaitskell’s use of the same phrase thirty years earlier at Labour’s Brighton conference. ‘He could refer to a thousand years of national history without mentioning any historical detail’, Billig wrote:

These were commonplaces in themselves. It was enough to remind the audience (or ‘us’) that ‘we’ have existed for a thousand years in ‘our’ unique manner. The speaker could presume that his audience would well understand, or recognize, that the nation possessed its own distinctive national identity.¹⁶

Those examples are also notable because they highlight the importance Billig accords media and politicians in the process of ‘flagging’ nationhood. If ‘political discourse, which is grounded in the national context … and employed in the practice of representation’ and ‘news-papers, like politicians claim to stand in the eye of the country’,¹⁷ then those forums offer an ideal vantage point for examining national themes in the European debate. That is particularly relevant for analysis of anti-Marketeers, who were so thoroughly immersed in identity questions.

But there are dangers in overstating the effortlessness of mobilising banal nationalism. The most prominent flags of national representation in the Common Market debate did not wave themselves. It should also be noted that ‘not all flags are waved … in the same vigorous manner’.¹⁸ Thus, while the anti-Marketeers proved adept at manipulating banal symbols, their most spirited banners were sometimes also ethnocentric. Moreover, national symbols could be accorded different meanings both among those who propagated the messages and among those who consumed them. Though pro-Marketeers were far less likely to invoke patriotic symbolism, it was nonetheless the case that the banal trappings of the World War II experience, for example, could provide either a rationale for EEC entry or grounds for rejecting membership. Similarly, hoisting the Commonwealth banner was by no means a guarantor of unity among anti-Marketeers. As we shall see, Commonwealth advocates split between those who accorded primacy to its newer members and those who championed kinship relationships with the older Dominions.

Imagining Britishness

Prior to examining elemental components of Britishness, the dynamic through which those elements are imbued with meaning and assimilated into versions of national identity deserves attention. First, if nations are ‘imagined communities’, as Anderson suggests,¹⁹ contemporary national identity is a function not merely of an original imagination but also of the extent to which the nation is re-imagined. Thus, nationalism, as Smith argues, is best understood as a process that incorporates the ‘attainment and maintenance of autonomy, unity and identity’,²⁰ interspersed with moments of more intense reflection, self-awareness or insecurity. This is also consistent with the dynamism described in Billig’s assertion that nations are not simply imagined but reproduced daily.

Second, as recent historical debate has shown, the meaning of British history is subject to considerable temporal variation.²¹ The same, however, might be said of identity. In fact, such is the complexity of British consciousness that some objections to European membership owe more to the experience of Flanders or Dunkirk and veneration of ‘the thousand years of history’ than to the implications of the Treaty of Rome or the eventualities of Maastricht.

Third, an acceptance of the continuing presence of nationalism must by extension recognise the electoral imperatives by which all parties attempt to align their policies with a proclaimed pursuit of the national interest. One of the conundrums for this study, however, is the difficulty of determining whether objections to Common Market membership constituted instinctive, emotive reactions of national identification or cynical, politically motivated appeals. On occasion, personal reactions appeared to transcend political interest, creating improbable anti-Market alliances and muting the partisan edges of the Common Market debate until the autumn of 1962. In other instances, multiple cases for and against European entry have led to contentious and politicised battles over the legitimacy of patriotic credentials. As Michael Foot (later a leader of the Labour Party but a rebellious backbencher in the early 1960s) complained, ‘We on the left are very resentful of these bloody Tories who try to come along and pinch patriotism as if the bloody thing belonged to them’.²²

Fourth, allegiance to the nation does not preclude other forms of identification. Smith has distinguished between a ‘pervasive, collective’ identity and more individualistic, ‘situational’ identities conditioned by various factors, including region, family, class, religion and ethnicity.²³ Thus, Britishness, understood as a ‘superimposed’²⁴ identity, coexists with sub-national, regional or local loyalties. Accepting this duality does not necessitate exclusive choices. In fact, British identity displays both collective and situational aspects in varying degrees. On the one hand, Britishness has been described as a collective but somewhat distant abstraction reflected in relations with the outside world and bound up with diplomatic, military, imperial and institutional images and symbols.²⁵ On the other hand, Britishness is ‘a source of personal identity … an occasional rather than a constant presence’.²⁶ As subsequent chapters will show, the most vociferous opponents of the first application subscribed to a range of keenly imagined versions of collective Britishness. But their voices were also augmented by the inclusion of those for whom a particular situation, namely the implied external threat of the Treaty of Rome, aroused an identifiably British reaction.

Fifth, Britishness may, ironically, be sustainable precisely because of, rather than in spite of, the vague or limited nature of its earliest definitions. Lawrence Brockliss and Da...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 National identity and Britishness
• 2 The Daily Express and the anti-Market campaign
• 3 Pundits
• 4 Pressure groups
• 5 Politicians
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• Footnote